1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the field of information storage technology. More particularly, the present invention relates to a means for prioritizing the storage of network nodes or web site addresses. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for designating certain nodes, links, or web addresses at the time of storage.
2. Description of Related Art
The worldwide network of computers commonly known as the “Internet” has seen explosive growth in the last several years. Mainly, this growth has been fueled by the introduction and widespread use of so-called “web browsers,” which enable simple graphical user interface-based access to network servers, which support documents formatted as so-called “web pages.” A browser is a program that is executed on a graphical user interface (GUI) which allows a user to read hypertext by means of the GUI. The browser gives some means of viewing the contents of web pages (or nodes) and of navigating from one web page to another.
Examples of browsers for the World Wide Web (WWW) include: Netscape Navigator from Netscape Communications Corporation, 501 East Middlefield Road, Mountain View, Calif. 94043, U.S.A.; Microsoft Internet Explorer, based on NCSA Mosaic, available from Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA; NCSA Mosaic, first available from National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Urbana, Ill., U.S.A. and now affiliated with Netscape Communications Corporation, 501 East Middlefield Road, Mountain View, Calif. 94043, USA; Lynx, for use on cursor-addressable, character cell terminals or terminal emulators under Unix or VMS, developed by the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kans.; and W3, a browser for Emacs, Extensible MACro System, a popular screen editor. Web browsers act as clients of remote web servers.
The WWW is a massive hypertext system that a computer user accesses using an information access apparatus such as a WWW browser computer application. The WWW browser application communicates with information provider apparatuses, such as WWW server computer applications, to obtain information and services in the form of web pages. These web pages are identified by unique Universal Resource Locators (URLs). Typically, a browser application provides bookmark capability for storing URLs for user-selected web pages. This simplifies the user's future access to these bookmarked web pages.
The background of the World Wide Web (WWW), WWW browser applications and Uniform Resource Locators, are well described by reference to the first chapter of Instant HTML Web Pages by Wayne Ause, Ziff-Davis Press, ISBN 1-56276-363-6, copyright 1995, pages 1–15, hereby incorporated by reference as illustrative of the prior art.
Although the invention applies to information access and information provider apparatus, WWW browser and WWW server applications are representative of the technology. As such, this application describes the invention within the context of a preferred embodiment utilizing WWW browser and WWW server applications.
As mentioned above, the WWW is a massive hypertext system. Thus, the information provided to a user often includes references to other related information. These references are via hypertext links. Activating these hypertext links often results in accessing completely different web pages (supplied from completely different WWW server applications on other computer systems) from the web page that contains the link. Thus, a user often follows many links to reach desired information or services.
Each node or web page visited by the user is stored in a browser defined memory or cache. The cache might be a memory cache for immediate access or a disk cache for less frequent or less immediate access. The browser defined cache is normally resident on the user's computer, but in the case of a net PC, it might be located at the server because of net PC's lack of resident RAM. Therefore, a list of the web sites accessed by the user is available for perusal by persons other than the user. The problem is especially acute with net PCs where the cache is not within the physical control of the user but held at a remote server location.
Even when the cache is physically located on the user's computer, the user cannot assume that the contents of the disk cache are safe from outside intrusion, much less secure if another user has access to the user's web browser. Anyone having access to the user's web browser cache could conceivably reconstruct a user's web searching activity and deduce the subject matter of the search. More importantly, every document or application opened using the web browser is potentially available to non-authorized users in the browser cache. Given the number of applications supported by a browser (especially a Java enabled browser), the potential for confidential information to be available in the browser cache is quite high. Not only web page identities and contents may be available from the browser cache, but also email correspondence, charts, data, and findings originally viewed using a web browser, and even information extracted from applications which run on a web browser. What is needed is a method for securing the contents of web browser cache, whether the cache is physically located locally on the user's computer or remotely at a server.